Nicola Grobler at Erdmann Contemporary
by Linda Stupart
In '4 auto-stroke' Nicola Grobler moves away from her usual realm of the domestic to an investigation of cars, exploring the motor vehicle as a site of private identity and as a public necessity, where a car is clearly more than a way of getting from A to B. Though the show has some interesting works, its mildly haphazard, loosely curated insertion into this neat gallery space robs the pieces of much of the impact suited to the artist's consciously chosen materials, alarm sounds and buzzing readymades.
Possibly the most aesthetically desirable and one of the more successful pieces is Slick, a black resin wave reminiscent of Hokusai's famous and threatening Great Wave off Kanagawa, surrounded by puddles of oil, which appeared as shining controlled areas on opening night but have slowly seeped onto the floor over the course of the show. Though this iconography is interesting, the über-threatening black wave commodified through its neat, shiny plasticity yet still oozing a worrying noxious substance, within the context of both its title and the exhibition as a whole, the piece seems stripped of its potential for multiple interpretations. Instead, Slick, begging association to an oil slick, seems to lead to a direct interpretation as a work about the dangers of pollution and the harm that automation causes - an unfortunately literal and rather innocuous statement of fact.
On the wall facing Slick is I, a piece that most clearly, and cleverly, describes the car as a vehicle for personal identity, folly and excess. It shows a large Rorschach ink blot made up of pieces of glass and tar on a large acrylic sheet - a personality test that is already perilous to the viewer. Under this is an LED display, like those advertising boards at service stations, which flashes what are at first meaningless texts in capital letters such as 'Z4PLAY', 'NIKKI14'. Some are, offensive, some possessive and many contain recognisable names. After some viewing the text starts to seem familiar, revealing itself as words from personalised number plates. Often referred to as 'vanity plates', these embody the ultimate in both self-obsession and constructed public identity where drivers pay large sums to advertise something about themselves.
The title of Escort provides a nice pun for a piece that I can only assume deals with the inscription of gender onto cars, which are invariably referred to as 'she', and the deviant sexual relationship that men can construct through these vehicles under their control. A car's windscreen, back and side windows are suspended from the ceiling and arranged as if they have somehow just lost the rest of the car - windows looking into nothing, set in nothing and suggesting a particular kind of voyeurism. This notion is extended as the viewer is encouraged to step inside the space of this ghost car and begins to notice images sandblasted onto the glass. The problem, however, is that it is particularly difficult to discern what these images represent. When standing in the furthest corner of the gallery one can almost make out what might be a woman performing some kind of erotic act, but it's hard to tell. The dated, hackneyed and here over-sanitised use of oversized benday dots (a lä Lichtenstein) also makes it a chore to spend time reconstructing an image and is logistically an unwise choice for such a small gallery.
The other pieces in the show then switch rather haphazardly to representing toy cars. Twitchers comprises an arrangement on a circular surface of such toys, each taking a turn to vibrate, apparently stuck in a traffic jam from which it is unable to extricate itself. A set of photographs on the wall show toy versions of the SUV's in which soccer moms traverse the suburbs. While this wry commentary has potential for interesting representation, Grobler's photographs are too pretty, too slick and too easy to incite any real interrogation from the viewer.
A sound work at the back of the gallery features two sets of headphones. These play a series of car alarms where the electronic noises have been replaced by bird calls. This is a good metaphor for the show: the potential for noise, excitement and response, hanging on some flimsy but slick wires.
Opens: September 6
Closes: October 8
Erdmann Contemporary
63 Shortmarket Street
Cape Town
Tel: (021) 422 2762
Email: photogallery@mweb.co.za
www.erdmanncontemporary.co.za
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm
